Kirin J. Callinan Stuns With Dirty, Upside-Down ‘Landslide’ Video

Australian singer/songwriter hangs out in uniquely striking 'Embracism' clip

A simple idea, executed with utter commitment, can be more powerful than we realize in a media environment cluttered with songs and videos long on aesthetic but short on singular characteristics. Kirin J. Callinan’s “Landslide” video demonstrates just how powerful. From this year’s Embracism, released via Grizzly Bear member Chris Taylor’s Terrible imprint, the song is a richly rendered, wobbly-voiced psych-pop ballad built around the idea of life as a landslide — “and we are dirt.”

Directed by Vincent Vandella and first posted by Pitchfork, the “Landslide” video shows a mud-caked Callinan singing with the ocean above him. Turns out the video was shot with the Down Under singer hanging upside-down, and then the finished product was flipped, so by the end you see a can of beer spilling upward. “It was actually a rather dangerous idea and more like torture but he was happy to submit himself to that pain and brutality,” Vandella said in a statement. There’s a reason there’s more than one sense to the word “committed,” but Callinan’s work here is just our brand of crazy.

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